Exclusive: Archigram archive sold to Hong Kong museum | News

Culture secretary Jeremy Wright has said he will allow the sale of the legendary architecture group’s archive to M +, a modern art and design museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and nearing completion.

The deal marks the culmination of a decade long search by the 1960s avant-garde group to find a suitable buyer.

The archive’s export was approved by Wright despite a recommendation to block the overseas sale made by a reviewing committee on the export of works of art and objects of cultural interest, administered by the Arts Council.

After hearing evidence from various parties, including an unnamed expert from one of the UK’s national museums who made the initial objection to the export, the committee recommended the government impose a temporary halt while a buyer was sought who would keep it in the UK.

It said the collection should stay in the UK due to its ‘outstanding significance in relation to architectural history’.

However, only cultural items over 50 years old can be blocked from export and Archigram’s archive comprises both items from that period and newer ones.

Wright concluded that an export licence should be granted ‘on the basis that the issue of overriding importance was that the archive should remain intact’.

Archigram member Peter Cook told the AJ he was relieved by the minister’s decision after what he called a ‘long, strange process’ following the sale in March last year. He said Archigram would look forward to celebrating it.

‘We’ll have a drink in Hong Kong I should think,’ he said. ‘We had made the sale and been paid and then unexpectedly a stop was put on [the export]. The people from M+ came to London and attended a committee hearing and have been pretty good about it. It was referred to the secretary of state and then went completely silent.’

But Archigram’s surviving members Cook, David Greene, Michael Webb and Dennis Crompton were willing to take a lower price from a leading international institution that would ensure the archive was properly conserved and made available to the public.

‘We didn’t haggle that much,’ Cook said. ‘We’re not very good at negotiating, but I got enough to pay off my mortgage. When we were hawking it around, there were some places that would have put it into a basement only for scholars to see. I hope that M+ will allow people to see it.’

He admitted he felt conflicted about the archive leaving Britain but said the country had no suitable architecture museum.

I think the lack of UK interest is a sign of a certain blinkeredness

‘I do have mixed feelings even though I’m not that nationalist,’ he said. ‘I do think [the lack of UK interest] is a sign of a certain blinkeredness.’

Crompton, the group’s archivist, said the work had been mostly stored in his house ‘under various beds and in cupboards’.

He added: ‘We had a big exhibition in Vienna in 1994 and work was framed for that, so it then became bulky. For the best part of 20 years, I’ve managed to keep it moving around the world so someone else had the problem of where to keep it.

‘Now it will be all together in a place which is young and enthusiastic and is the Far Eastern version of the Pompidou Centre or MOMA.’

Following its years of international touring, the archive was held by the University of Westminster as part of a scheme to digitise 10,000 Archigram images around a decade ago. Since then it has been stored at a facility in Southend on Sea.

The AJ understands that M+ acquired the archive under the direction of its then lead curator Aric Chen and is now bidding to acquire other architects’ archives such as that of Arata Isozaki.

The reviewing committee on the export of works of art and objects of cultural interest advises the Department for Digital, Cultural, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the export of cultural property and assesses items against the three ‘Waverley Criteria’.

It concluded that the Archigram archive met the third of these, which asks ‘is it of outstanding significance for the study of some particular branch of art, learning or history?’ and also noted the work’s influence on the built work of architects such as Richard Rogers and Norman Foster.

‘The Archigram archives are a unique resource for the study of the Archigram group, one of the most innovative and influential collectives in 20th-century architecture,’ it concluded.

M+ has been approached for comment.

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What’s in the Archigram archive?

The archive comprises 3,000-4,000 drawings, between 11,000 and 14,000 photographs, 17 models, 430 video and audio tapes and around 60 boxes of documents, correspondence, financial information and various objects. These items document around 200 projects ranging from sketches for the 1962 Nottingham Shopping Centre (Cook and Greene) to material covering the group’s Living City exhibition of 1963 to drawings for Cook’s Plug in City (1963-64) and Ron Herron’s Walking Cities project (1964).

It also includes later works such as plans for the world’s-fair pavilions in Malaysia, Montreal and Osaka and the 1968 Instant City. According to the expert advice given to the reviewing committee on the export of works of art and objects of cultural interest, the archive represents a ‘window onto the avant-garde of British architectural culture in the 1960s and early 1970s’.